Wilhelm Busch

Wilhelm Busch (15 April 1832 – 9 January 1908) was an influential German caricaturist, painter, and poet who is famed for his satirical picture stories with rhymed texts.

After initially studying mechanical engineering and then art in Düsseldorf, Antwerp, and Munich, he turned to drawing caricatures. One of his first picture stories, Max and Moritz (published in 1865), was an immediate success and has achieved the status of a popular classic and perennial bestseller.

Max and Moritz as well as many of his other picture stories are regarded as one of the main precursors of the modern comic strip. Max and Moritz, for instance, was an inspiration for the Katzenjammer Kids. Being an early pioneer next to Rodolphe Töpffer in the art of combining words and pictures to tell often humorous stories in sequential panels, throughout the latter half of the 20th century Busch has become posthumously known in German by the honorary epithet of Großvater der Comics ("Grandfather of Comics").

Wilhelm Busch also wrote a number of poems in a similar style to his picture stories. Besides that he produced more than 1,000 oil paintings that remained unsold up to his death in 1908. He is associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting. He was also active as a sculptor.

Many couplets from Busch's humorous verses have achieved the status of adages in the German language, such as "Vater werden ist nicht schwer, Vater sein dagegen sehr" ("It's easy to become a father, but being one is harder rather") or "Dieses war der erste Streich, doch der zweite folgt sogleich" ("This was the first initial trick, but then the second follows quick"). Only Goethe and Schiller are quoted more frequently in German than Busch.